You all seem unable to come to any conclusions on jumping to conclusions about Ben Olsen. Maybe this will help:
I don't necessarily disagree, but there was nothing innovative about what Houston was doing. They simply were switching the point of attack either diagonally over the defense or straight over the top (Robbie Russell continued to baffle me as to why he constantly was pinched in on such a narrow field - it was as if just because he hasn't seen it very much this season, he really shouldn't worry about it). Why United was continuing to play such a high line defensively down a man was a tactical error from Olsen. This of course is a byproduct of the attacking mentality of United. Very often if United is driving the tempo of the match, they play a high line due to the time on the ball in the offensive half of the opponent. Olsen should have compacted his squad and go as deep into the match trailing 1-0 and then go for the game-tying goal late on. Another lesson for Olsen to learn
First, you gotta have the players on the team who can go from the up-tempo, attack-oriented game we like to have - (as is true for most other MLS teams) - Be we really don't - A few players like Branko may be able to switch but not many others - (again, as is true for most other MLS teams) Only when you really have enough versatile players who can play both can you actually then practice that a lot
Here's another United manager whose team continued to play a high line of defense despite the game slipping away from them. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/15325536 It happens to the best of managers.
Yes, Olsen played the high defensive line because he was looking for a quick counter after regaining possession. But another way to go was to switch to a possession-first game plan, in which you try to deny the opponent the ball. That's why I was disappointed when Bosko came out after Hamid's red card, because he is the man you want in there when you want to emphasize possession and good ball movement. Instead, Ben retained Santos, whose principal strength is collecting long balls from the defense. But this works only part of the time, and rarely when your defenders are under intense pressure. If Santos had left, there was a chance that Bosko, DeRo, Pontius, and maybe Kitchen could have worked the ball up the field, or at least held on to it, and the rout would not have occurred.
Of course the rumors of a Brek Shea trade (not to us, but just off Dallas) aren't true, but I can only imagine how could he would be on our squad.
Yeah, that was a good one! He was so effective that I think he should start in goal for the away leg in the ECF.
Not to nitpick, but I don't like the Dudar sub. Imagine if Henry takes that shot free kick and scores, we're playing with a pretty weak offense in the extra 30 minutes.
Another Olsen sub turns gold, even if it was a substitution he didn't want to make. Has any coach ever been this lucky in one season? I've really never seen anything like it. BTW,COTY is still Yallop by a landslide. SS should get way more weight than MLS Cup playoffs for COTY.
It is supposed to be regular season only, but voters always at least subconsciously consider post-season results. I'm sure De Leon's goal last night will be in their minds for rookie of the year
I think the OP when this was made titled it something like "******** Ben Olsen what a shitty coach." and along those lines. it was right after the 4-0 loss in Houston, where Hamid also got sent off.
This is the kinder, gentler BigSoccer. When they did the software change, those "Rep" buttons said "Like"; and rather than counting how many "reps" you'd received, it counted how many "likes" your posts had received. Remind you of any other site? That other site doesn't have "Dislike" buttons. All they did was do a global search and replace on the code, replacing "like" with "rep".